Young Bess

by Margaret Irwin

  And to assuage (or was it to arouse?) his jealousy at some fresh plan of the Protector’s for a foreign alliance for her: ‘It has been said that I have only refused you because I was thinking of someone else. I therefore entreat you, my lord, to set your mind at rest on this subject; up to this time I have not the slightest intention of being married, and if ever I should think of it (which I do not believe is possible) you would be the first to whom I should make known my resolution.’

  His head jerked back in a crack of laughter as he read that. He would indeed be the first, and not so long now, to whom she should make known her resolution.

  As for those coy protestations about never marrying, she was an absurd minx to think them worth the writing.

  He had to ride down just once more to tell her so, and had the luck to meet her out riding through the beech-woods round Hatfield that dull late November afternoon.

  ‘What do you know about marriage?’ he said as their servants promptly dropped behind. ‘Or about yourself either? You’re a child, though an intelligent one – too much so, one would think, to write such stuff.’

  ‘I’ve learnt about marriage from my stepmothers,’ she said, sliding a look at him.

  ‘God forbid! D’you think, then, we all play Old Harry with our wives?’

  ‘You’ve not all got his opportunities.’

  ‘No, but seriously—’

  ‘Seriously, my lord, my first stepmother, Jane, died in childbed, and so was the only past wife he spoke of with respect; my second, big Anne Cleves, he shoved out of the way for my pretty cousin Cat Howard, whom he beheaded – and my last one gave me a step-stepfather,’ she finished, and this time she did not look at him.

  He stared at the white profile against the grey misty beech-trunks, their horses’ hoofs squelching the thick wet fallen leaves of the road through the woods. There was no colour anywhere except in her hair, which flamed like a belated autumn leaf beside him. They said red hair showed a passionate nature; she had shown him that too. But how much else was there in her that she did not show?

  They were having her portrait painted now, a stiff unchildlike thing (pity old Holbein was dead) and not much like her except for the childishly thin erect shoulders and beautiful hands, carefully displayed, and the level eyes that could look at you so coolly with that wicked little hint of mockery in one of them – he’d always told her they didn’t match! The lips were shut tight, compressed into a thin line as if to let no secret escape them. ‘Cross at being made to stand still so long, weren’t you?’ he had chaffed her as he looked at it. But yes, there was something in it that was like her, the gaze so direct, yet baffling.

  ‘Elizabeth the Enigma,’ he had once called her years ago when she was quite a child, called her that to tease her as he had stood watching a pattern of wavering watery light flickering up under her soft yet resolute little chin. Where had that been?

  It did not matter. His name for her had come true. He never could be sure of her.

  ‘Say it!’ he roared suddenly. ‘Why do you never say what you think?’

  ‘I do not say all that I think. But at least I never say anything I do not think. What is it you wish me to say?’

  ‘All – yes, all that you think. What is this grudge, or fear against me – why the “stepfather”? Catherine is dead and I cannot help that. I loved her.’

  ‘And loved me.’

  ‘I could not help that either. Nor could you.’

  ‘Nor may you help loving others. And that would be hell on earth to me.’

  She whipped up her horse and galloped ahead. He rode after her, he caught at her rein, his eyes were blazing with anger, he said he would never love, never had loved, any woman as he loved her. Still holding her bridle, he leapt from his saddle and pulled her down from hers, letting her horse go.

  ‘I’ll show you how I love you,’ he said between his teeth as she fell forward into his arms and they closed round her, hugging the breath out of her.

  His startled horse veered round and began to canter back down the ride. A heavier, more regular thudding of horses’ hoofs came towards it. ‘God’s soul!’ Tom exploded in incredulous fury that their escort should dare to catch them up.

  But the gaunt old man with the long white beard flowing over his chest now riding through the woods towards them, like the approach of winter, was none of their escort. It was the Lord Privy Seal – Father Russell – as Tom always called him.

  ‘I feared frost and here’s snow,’ said Bess to herself.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  ‘My Lord Admiral,’ said the Lord Privy Seal that evening, ‘there are certain rumours about you which I am very sorry to hear.’

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘That you mean to marry with’ – he coughed a little – ‘the Lady Mary, or else – ahem – with the Lady Elizabeth.’

  ‘Oh, that!’ observed Tom casually. ‘Surely you’ll throw in Anne of Cleves?’

  ‘That too is said,’ said Russell stiffly, ‘and the Lady Jane Grey has also been mentioned. It makes little odds which of them it is, since all are royal; except that, naturally, the King’s sisters are the most royal of all.’

  ‘Father Russell, you are very suspicious of me. Who’s been telling you these tales?’

  Father Russell would not say, except that those who had done so were the Admiral’s very good friends and advised him, as he himself did, ‘to make no suit of marriage that way,’ as though it were too dangerous even to repeat the names of the prospective brides. But Tom showed no such caution.

  ‘Even a King’s sisters may marry,’ was his modest answer, ‘and better for them to marry within the realm than outside it; so why might not I, or any other man, raised by the King their father, marry one of them?’

  It sounded a fair and honest question. But Father Russell’s face was nearly as long as his beard as he replied to it.

  ‘My lord, if either you or any other within this realm shall match himself in marriage either with my Lady Mary or my Lady Elizabeth, he shall undoubtedly procure unto himself the occasion of his own utter undoing – and you especially, being of so near alliance to the King’s Majesty.’

  A deep silence followed the warning. Their steps went on and on, up and down, heavy, padded, measured steps in velvet slippers on the black and white marbled flags of the hall floor, while the rain fell outside the shuttered windows that rattled and creaked in the wintry gale.

  Tom’s Austrian boar-hound pricked an ear and stirred in his sleep by the fire as a gust and spatter of rain blew down the wide chimney and hissed on the burning logs.

  He raised his head and listened to the footsteps going up and down behind him. His master was not wont to walk so, in silence, with any man. He rose heavily, stretched himself and shaking off the dreams of hunting that had been enchanting him as he lay in blissful warmth with his nose to the fire: he went and walked beside his master, up and down, up and down, to tell him that he was there, and that if he uttered the word he would be delighted to fly at the throat of this skinny man who smelt old and dry, who walked cautiously, who spoke coldly, who had made his master silent.

  And he gave a preliminary yearning sniff at his bony ankles.

  ‘What’s your dog doing?’ asked the Lord Privy Seal. ‘Reminding me that there are better friends than humans,’ said the Lord High Admiral.

  It was Privy Seal’s turn to sniff.

  ‘And what would you get out of it?’ he asked suddenly. ‘How much do you think you’d have with either of them?’

  ‘Three thousand a year,’ said Tom coolly.

  ‘You’re wrong. Not a farthing more than ten thousand down, in money, plate and goods – and no land. And what’s that to a man who’s got to keep up the estate of a Princess’s husband?’

  ‘They must have £3,000 a year as well,’ said Tom.

  ‘God’s body, they will not.’

  ‘God’s soul, they will! God’s life, I tell you—’

  ‘God’s death, I tell
you, no.’

  The Lord High Admiral, outsworn by that aged and venerable man, Lord Privy Seal, was silent again. Only his hound gave a hungry yawn.

  Upstairs in her little closet, with the firelight winking on the silver candlesticks and the gilded carving of the ceiling, and the icy rain drumming against the windows where padded blue velvet curtains shut out the draughts, Mrs Ashley was having a long cosy chat with Mr Parry, the steward, over a nice hot brandy posset of her own brewing.

  ‘Oh, it’s true enough,’ said Mrs Ashley. ‘There’s – well, what shall I say? – put it at its lowest, there’s goodwill between the Lord Admiral and Her Grace – but I had such a charge of secrecy in it that I dare say nothing about it, except that I would wish her his wife of all men living. And I dare say he might bring off the matter with the Council well enough.’

  ‘But do you think he will with her?’ asked Mr Parry. ‘I once was bold enough to ask her whether she’d marry him if the Council liked it, and all she would say was, “When that comes to pass, I will do as God shall put into my mind.”’

  ‘That’s Her Grace all over,’ chuckled Mrs Ashley. ‘Fobbed me off too, she did – or tried to. “What’s the news from London?” she asked after my last visit. “Why,” said I, “the voice goes there that you are to marry the Lord Admiral.” Such a look she gave me – and then laughed – you know her laugh, clear as all the birds in the air. “Get out!” said she, “That’s only London news!” Oh, she’s deep – deep as a well, but she’ll never take me in. I know too much.’ And she took another sip at her posset and wagged her head, then two or three more sips and wagged her head two or three more times; then set down the empty cup and pursed her lips as though not another drop nor word should pass either way.

  It was clearly incumbent on Mr Parry to do something about it. He leant forward and filled her cup with a carefully steady hand, then sank back with a comfortable sigh and said, ‘Ah, she’s got a true friend in you.’

  ‘That she has,’ said Mrs Ashley. ‘Too true, maybe. I’ve tried to shield her when it’s done no good to her, but harm to me. That woman, the Duchess, I mean, must have as many eyes in her tail as a peacock. The things she’s nosed out!’

  ‘What things?’ enquired Mr Parry, as his colleague showed further signs of pursing.

  ‘Things that I never breathed to a soul – and never will.’

  ‘Come, if the Duchess knows them, what matter who else does?’

  ‘She doesn’t know all, thank heaven, and what she does is all crooked, like her own nasty mind. Told me I wasn’t worthy to have the governance of a King’s daughter! Because I permitted – permitted, mark you! – that’s a nice one, if she only knew! – permitted my young lady to go out at night on the Thames in a barge with the Admiral. And other light parts.’

  ‘Which parts?’

  ‘Just parts,’ said Mrs Ashley vaguely.

  ‘Well, there’s no harm in a barge,’ said Mr Parry. ‘Can’t be, with the oarsmen facing the canopy. If it were a gondola, now! I knew a man who’d been in Venice,’ he began reminiscently.

  The spur acted quickly. Mrs Ashley, determined to prevent his anecdote, hastily assured him that there were other light parts besides barges. There were garden walks, benches in pleached alleys, and there the late Queen Catherine had come on her stepdaughter in her husband’s arms.

  ‘No!’ said the steward.

  ‘Yes!’ said the governess.

  ‘And that’s why,’ said the governess with finality.

  ‘Why what?’ asked the steward.

  ‘Why we had to go away and have a separate establishment for Her Grace. It wasn’t the first time the Queen had been jealous, I’m sure of that, and she was getting near her time, which made things worse.’

  She emptied her cup absent-mindedly.

  ‘What was I saying?’ she asked.

  ‘That it made things worse.’

  ‘What things? Oh yes, the Queen’s jealousy, poor soul. I can tell you, Mr Parry, it’s been no easy business among the lot of them.’

  Mr Parry made sympathetic noises and filled up his own cup.

  ‘No easy bus-i-ness,’ repeated Mrs Ashley, determined to get those s’s quite distinct. It was the consonants that were the trouble. She would talk more freely if there weren’t so many tiresome consonants in the words she wanted to use. No one could say she was drunk. She had seen Nan Bullen reeling about the room and swearing, but she was never like that. She might not be a queen, but she was a lady. And Mr Parry was a gentleman, a nice safe quiet dependable gentleman. It could not matter what one said to him. He understood.

  ‘Women,’ said Mr Parry.

  ‘Yes, women,’ said Mrs Ashley, ‘and one of them hardly a girl, but the most difficult of the lot. After all, she’s—’ she rushed her consonants, ‘—she’s old-Harry’s-daughter.’

  ‘Eh?’ said Mr Parry.

  ‘Red hair,’ explained Mrs Ashley. ‘Not pretty, but—’

  ‘Ah,’ said Mr Parry.

  ‘The Admiral was always wild for her. Only married the Queen because he couldn’t get the Princess.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Mr Parry. He filled up both their cups.

  ‘And then,’ said Mrs Ashley, looking at her cup, surprised to find it still so full and sipping a little to rectify this, ‘then, of course, with her in the house, there was the devil – ahem! shall I say, Old Harry? – to pay!’

  She laughed, and so did Mr Parry. After all, it was a long time since she had had such an enjoyable evening, such a companionable evening. She wanted to say so, but companionable was a difficult word. It was better to stick to facts.

  She stuck to them. All that about the Admiral coming into the Princess’s room in the mornings. Bare legs. Bed-curtains. Smacking. Tickling. They were all quite simple words. And didn’t mean any – he hadn’t meant any harm. He had sworn so, on God’s mosht precioush shoul. But when Queen Catherine had found her alone in his arms – well that was another matter.

  Mr Parry quite agreed.

  ‘Well, all that’s over now,’ said Mrs Ashley. ‘Poor lady! He’s free now. And I’d wish her his wife of all men living. For it’s my belief, if she doesn’t marry him, she’ll marry no one.’

  She sighed deeply and picked up her cup, but it was empty. Mr Parry leant forward again.

  But he never filled the cup. He sat there with his eyes on Mrs Ashley, and hers on his, and between them a cry went shivering through the air, splintering up that cosy friendly warmth into thin particles of ice, a cry that froze them both sober, a cry not of this world nor of any that they knew.

  Mrs Ashley sprang up, knocking the jug out of Mr Parry’s hand over her gown and never noticing it; she picked up her wet skirt, never noticing that it dripped with brandy posset, and ran, straight as a die, to the room of her charge, the Princess Elizabeth.

  She burst open the door and drew the bed-curtains. The light of the candles and the fire poured into the dark cave of the curtained bed, over a slight figure sitting bolt upright, and red hair rippling over the bare shoulders, and a small white face aghast, with staring eyes and open, shrieking mouth.

  ‘My lamb,’ cried Mrs Ashley, ‘my sweet, my treasure, what’s the matter? There’s no harm near you, there’s nothing here, I tell you, nothing but your old Ash-Cat.’

  She hugged the staring face to her thin bosom, stroking the rough hair over and over, feeling the young bones of the skull beneath, and now feeling, almost with relief, the long sobs that came welling up, shaking the childish shoulders.

  ‘You’ve been dreaming, my lamb, that is all, a hateful dream. You’ve been riding the night mare – where to? Tell your old Ash-Cat. It’s better to tell and have done with it so.’

  ‘Oh Cat, my old Ash-Cat, you’re right – if only I could tell it, Cat, my Ash-Cat.’

  What was it there at the end of the corridor that had been so terrible, so strange, yet somehow familiar? The rain on the roof, the icy winter wind, they had drummed in her sleep now for years – no,
only two – the years since her father died. The night he died, just two years ago, she had got out of her bed in the Palace at Whitehall and run along the corridor, until she fell plump into the arms of the Lord Admiral. Ever since she had dreamt of running along the corridor, into his arms.

  Tonight again she had done so, but this time the door at the end of the corridor was closed. She had hammered on it with both fists, knowing that if it did not open at once she would be too late – too late for what? Too late for her life, or his, or both?

  The door would not open, but she could see through it.

  She saw the Admiral sitting on a stone bench in a small bare room, taking off his shoes. He was looking into them, plucking something out of them, and then beginning to write with it. He was writing to her. But whatever he wrote she knew she would never see it. She tried to call to him through the door. But he could not hear her, and she could not see what he was writing.

  ‘I shall never see it,’ she cried to Cat Ashley, ‘I shall never, never see it!’

  The dream was fading. Even as she thought of it, she could not think what had so terrified her. The things that had affected her conscious mind came forward instead. So that all Cat Ashley heard of what she had not dreamt was this: ‘What reproaches did Queen Catherine whisper to her husband on her death-bed? What misery did she know through marrying the man she loved?’

  Said Cat Ashley stoutly, ‘She knew great happiness with him. Let that content you, as it did her. There was no bitterness in her end.’

  Bess answered her, ‘Because there never was in her life. It would not be so with me. If my husband did not love me alone, it would be worse than death, it would be perpetual hell.’

  ‘Sweetheart, is this the dream that troubled you so?’

  ‘No,’ said she. ‘I dreamt of the Admiral taking off his shoes.’

  Her laugh terrified Mrs Ashley more than her cries had done.

  Suddenly the girl sniffed long and searchingly. ‘Fie, Ash-Cat,’ said she, ‘how you stink of brandy!’